Why Fear Controls Attention

Missing a tiger cost ancestors everything; missing a nice fact cost little. We are walking threat detectors with phones.

News used to be periodic; now it is push notification warfare. Body cannot tell tiger from trending hashtag.

Chronic fear politics keeps people voting and buying security products.

Regulate inputs: no news before bed, walk after reading heavy stories, talk to humans offline.

Distinguish prepared from paranoid—prepared has plans; paranoid has only rumination.

Therapy helps when fear generalizes to everything.

Health-fear-behavior overlap exists.